The Web is 24 years old!

For most young people across the world, the day begins by checking Facebook for updates from friends and family; checking on Whatsapp for chats and glancing at their BBM feeds and pings. Adults now get their news updates over the internet on their mobile devices. Jobs are applied for on the internet and almost everything today can be carried out on the internet. The world has truly become a social one and almost everyone interacts with the internet in one way or the other.

Surprisingly, most people that use the internet do not understand the extraordinary power that the internet has and almost ninety-nine (99%) percent of people who use the internet do not know much about the internet except for petty tasks that one can accomplish on the internet.

What is most disheartening is that most Nigerian youths buy phones that are worth tens of thousands of naira and subscribe to internet services monthly only to use them for these petty activities like chatting and posting of pictures online while they remain in ignorance, lack and a seemingly unprogressive place.

Meanwhile, the Internet is an enormous– and enormously useful tool that could transform a life and open opportunities that have been isolated from you due to distance and other barriers. The ideology of ‘equal humans’ becomes more practical on the internet. You get a level playing ground as everybody else. You can share, collaborate and benefit from the knowledge and experiences of other seasoned professionals.

Through this series of articles, we are going to learn about the internet and the how we can use the internet to improve ourselves. However, we would begin at what the web* is and what are some of the characteristics that can help you improve?

The web- or the World Wide Web in full-is a hypertext platform that runs on the internet. These days however, the internet is not differentiated from the web even though they are two different things. Invented in 1991, the web is the only medium for sharing information between devices on the internet and like every other person at the age of 24; the web has never been as powerful and as full of potential like it is in our days. Strength peaks at 24years and the web is exactly 24years old this May, 2015 so it is at its most productive stage. Follow ‘The Colossal Web’ series of articles-exclusive series on www.sunmyke.com-as we explore the power of the web and how you can use it to better your life.

For indeed, the web is a very powerful transformational tool it has been tagged ‘the finger of God’.